Blader: you nailed it. I remember water rationing/past usage baselines and how little sense it made. I also remember that summer no one ever bothered to fix the broken sprinkler heads at school that would just spew a fountain of water in the air for 4 hours a day.

Fritz: Yessirreee, that's what lane splitting is about. And yes, in CA it's not illegal. It looks a little narrower on the video than it is in real life, and for anyone not familiar with it it probably looks dangerous. But to anyone in Europe or Asia (or CA) it's most likely business as usual and demonstrates how fluidly one can move inside an otherwise congested system. Do it right (don't ride blind-spots, be hyper-vigilant, watch the gaps, watch mirrors, avoid lane splitting between lanes moving at different rates, don't cruise at more than 15-20% faster than traffic) and you'll have no more 'close calls' than you would if you were driving in your own lane (and you'll never be rear-ended). The only incidents I've ever had lane splitting in CA involved someone intentionally tried to run into me.

Best lane splitting revenge story ever: two dudes in a POS crapmobile on the Bay Bridge intentionally opened a door on a guy who was lane splitting. He crashed, got up, and, as a result of their mistake (and their laughter), beat the living hell out of both of them. Dude on the bike was a Navy Seal.

Seems strange to me so many states don't require helmets, but only two now (CA and NV) allow lane splitting.

Trane: I've only been pulled over once while lanesplitting (warning, I'd been riding for about a week and was going too fast). Most cops in CA on motorbikes split lanes at a far higher rate than I ever do. And I really need to get a secondary mic for the GoPro or I'm going to have to start overlaying music to drown out the bad audio the camera pics up.